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      in World Politics

      The New Scary Specter of “Woke Communism”

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      in US Politics

      Ron DeSantis sees ‘freedom’ in Florida – thanks to Republican supermajority

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      Ron DeSantis sees ‘freedom’ in Florida – thanks to Republican supermajorityThe governor – believed by many to mount a 2024 presidential campaign – is ramping up an ‘anti-woke’ crusade with a veto-proof supermajority in state legislature If there’s one word Floridians have heard plenty of since their Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, was sworn in for a second term last month, it is “freedom”. The rightwing politician, expected by many to seek his party’s 2024 presidential nomination, sprinkles the word freely as he ramps up the “anti-woke” crusade he believes can propel him to the White House.Nikki Haley says Florida’s ‘don’t say gay’ law does not go ‘far enough’Read moreIt turns out, following a special legislative session last week that handed DeSantis victory after victory in his culture wars against big corporations, the transgender community, students, migrants and racial minorities, the person with the greatest freedom in Florida to do exactly as he pleases is the governor himself.In November, voters granted DeSantis’s wish of a veto-proof Republican supermajority in the state legislature. In a five-day session, those politicians validated every one of his demands.They granted DeSantis total control of the board governing Disney, the theme park giant with whom he feuded over his anti-LGBTQ+ “don’t say gay” law.They gave him permission to fly migrants from anywhere in the US to destinations of his choosing, for political purposes, then send the bill to Florida’s taxpayers.And they handed unprecedented prosecutorial powers to his newly created, hand-picked office of election “integrity”, pursuing supposed cases of voter fraud.The special session is over but DeSantis’s devotion to seeking retribution against those who disagree with him is not.Last week, after a backlash, the Florida High School Athletic Association backed away from forcing female students to chronicle their menstrual histories on medical forms, a requirement seen by many as a thinly-veiled attempt to keep transgender athletes out of girls’ sports.Exactly one week later, a Republican House committee proposed allowing DeSantis to turf out those who made the decision and replace them with his own appointments.It’s a familiar playbook: the Disney legislation allows the governor to supplant sitting officials on its governing tax authority with his own picks; his “hostile takeover” of the liberal New College of Florida last month was accomplished by swamping its board of trustees with hand-picked allies and conservative Christians.In what critics say was a particularly petty act earlier this month, DeSantis moved to strip the liquor license from the non-profit Orlando Philharmonic Plaza Foundation because it hosted a drag show, which some children attended with parents.The threats keep coming. The notoriously thin-skinned DeSantis wants to cut state ties with the College Board, which criticised him for a “PR stunt and posturing” when he demanded it revise an advanced placement college course on African American studies he said “lacked educational value”.“No politician should silence the stories of Black and brown people who helped create our country. Our democracy and constitutional values must transcend such hateful and callous political agendas,” said Tiffani Lemon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.Others accuse DeSantis of fascism, among them the progressive Democratic congressman Maxwell Frost, whose vocal criticism of the governor long predated his election in November.“If you disagree with Ron DeSantis he’ll abuse his power to close down your business, take over your school, remove your classes and unconstitutionally fire you,” Frost said in a tweet. “I encourage folks to look up the definition of fascism then read these headlines.”Other Florida Democrats see the DeSantis-ordered special legislative session as his “get out jail free card”, sweeping away legal obstacles and other hurdles that threatened to stall his policy objectives.His original plan to abolish the Disney authority would have saddled residents with $1bn in bond debt, so instead he asked the legislature to rename and restructure it.Judges threw out charges against several ex-felons the governor said voted illegally because his state office lacked prosecutorial authority, so a new law was drafted to give it.DeSantis’s administration was sued for flying migrants from Texas to Massachusetts in a “vile political stunt” stunt last year, because the existing law restricted migrant removals to those physically in Florida. So he changed the law.“It’s just a clear example of DeSantis changing the law because he broke the law,” said Anna Eskamani, a Democratic state congresswoman who voted against the new measure to allow the governor to fly migrants anywhere.“Republicans like Ron DeSantis don’t care about the rules. If they don’t like the rules, they change them. And if they can’t change them they try to destroy them, as we saw with the [January 6] insurrection.”Gregory Koger, chair of political science at the University of Miami, said the issues the legislature addressed suggested “speed over thought” when the DeSantis administration was planning its strategies.“It’s not unusual at all to see legislators and executives fixing problems in the laws that they have passed,” he said.DeSantis wins new power over Disney World in ‘don’t say gay’ culture warRead more“You could have had a slow, bipartisan, well-thought-out approach to changing the relationship between Florida and Disney, but that isn’t what we observed. We saw a law being drafted and passed as an act of retribution, and now they have to come back and say, ‘Well, when we passed our act of retribution, here’s what we actually meant.’“Same with changing the guidelines for Florida to fly migrants. That seems like an effort to back out of a legal challenge to their behavior by retroactively saying the legislature is actually OK tricking people into getting on a plane in Texas and flying them from there, rather than finding actual undocumented people in Florida.”In an email to the Guardian, DeSantis’s press secretary, Bryan Griffin, defended the governor, saying he was bringing “a new era of accountability and transparency” to Disney, Florida’s biggest employer.“Businesses in Florida should operate on a level playing field,” Griffin said. “In 1967, the Florida legislature created the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which gifted extraordinary special privileges to a single corporation.“Until Governor DeSantis acted, the Walt Disney Company maintained sole control over the district. This power amounted to an unaccountable corporate kingdom.”TopicsRon DeSantisRepublicansFloridaUS politicsUS elections 2024US domestic policyfeaturesReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      US officials say all debris from suspected Chinese spy balloon has been collected – as it happened

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      Ron DeSantis has recently gained a reputation as the GOP’s best hope to keep Donald Trump from the top of the ticket in 2024.The governor reinvigorated the culture wars in Florida, including by taking on Disney World, cracking down on shaky claims of election fraud and going after the state’s higher education institutions for being too “woke”.But that doesn’t mean Republicans won’t have other candidates to choose from. Trump’s former UN ambassador Nikki Haley formally launched her presidential campaign this week, and his ex-vice-president Mike Pence is waiting in the wings, along with a host of others. That all could be good news for the former president; a recent poll showed it would be DeSantis’s support – not Trump’s – that would suffer in a contested primary.Sarah Palin, the one-time candidate for vice-president whose hokey, vapid brand of conservatism is seen as a prototype for Trump’s iconic style, thinks DeSantis should hold off. “He should stay governor for a bit longer. He’s young, you know. He has decades ahead of him where he can be our president,” she said this week. That’s the opposite of the advice she gave herself in 2009, when she resigned as Alaska’s governor before completing her term.We still don’t have all the answers about the recent spate of UFO shootdowns, but the US military announced it had recovered all of the Chinese spy balloon destroyed off South Carolina’s coast. As for the three other mysterious objects American warplanes downed over the US and Canada, there’s a compelling theory that one was a hobbyist’s balloon launched from Illinois. Speaking of the midwestern state, Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, will head there next week to address a police union – just the type of thing a state politician with national aspirations would do.Here’s what else happened today:
      The justice department searched the offices of a group connected to Mike Pence, but found no new classified documents.
      Joe Biden spoke out in support of John Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s Democratic senator who checked himself into a hospital for treatment of clinical depression.
      Georgia’s Republican secretary of state is claiming vindication after a special grand jury unanimously found there was no evidence of fraud in the 2020 election.
      Fox News’ biggest names never believed Donald Trump’s election fraud claims but parroted them anyway, newly released court filings show. This story has raised plenty of eyebrows – except for readers of the Wall Street Journal, a publication that shares ownership with the network and has yet to cover it.
      On the new Index of Impunity, the US’s ranking is not particularly enviable.
      With Roe v Wade overturned, the religious right is now pushing legislation in Republican-led states that would crack down on everything from drag queen performances to the sale of romance novels, Hallie Lieberman reports:A wave of proposed legislation pushed by Republicans across the US at the state level is aimed at outlawing aspects of sexuality that could have a huge impact on Americans’ private lives and businesses.Opponents of the laws before legislatures in various states say the planned new legislation could spawn prosecution of breast-pump companies in Texas for nipples on advertising, or a bookstore might be banned from selling romance novels in West Virginia, or South Carolina could imprison standup comics if a risque joke is heard by a young person.The bills are part of a post-Roe nationwide strategy by the religious wing of the Republican party, now that federal abortion rights have fallen. They range from banning all businesses that sell sex-related goods to anti-drag queen bills. Tyler Dees, an Arkansas state senator who wrote an anti-porn bill, said: “I would love to outlaw it all,” referring to porn.The most prevalent bills relate to age verification of sex-related websites. Seventeen states drafted porn age-verification bills, many inspired by Louisiana’s law that went into effect in January. Louisiana’s law requires websites featuring one-third or more pornographic content to check government-issued ID to verify users are 18 or older. Websites that don’t comply face civil penalties. Parents can sue a site if their kids access it. Republicans take aim at risque jokes and romance novels with anti-sex billsRead moreJoe Biden spoke out in support of Senator John Fetterman’s decision to seek hospital treatment for depression:John, Gisele – Jill and I are thinking about your family today.Millions of people struggle with depression every day, often in private.Getting the care you need is brave and important. We’re grateful to you for leading by example. https://t.co/V3rGZSKrM4— President Biden (@POTUS) February 17, 2023
      The White House press secretary also talked about the Democratic lawmaker’s decision in her briefing today:01:23Vice-president Kamala Harris along with a host of Democratic and Republican lawmakers are at the annual Munich security conference, where they heard a speech from Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Here’s what he had to say, from the Guardian’s Patrick Wintour:The west needs to hurry up its support for Ukraine as Vladimir Putin will gain a military advantage unless arms deliveries and further sanctions arrive soon, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address to world leaders at a security conference in Munich in the face of mounting fears that Russia is planning a new offensive.“We need to hurry up. We need speed – speed of our agreements, speed of our delivery … speed of decisions to limit Russian potential,” the Ukrainian president said. “There is no alternative to speed because it is speed that life depends on.”He added: “Delay has always been and still is a mistake.”His address came just days before the anniversary on 24 February of Moscow sending its forces into the country and unleashing the biggest war in Europe since the 1940s.Zelenskiy warned that Russia was trying to mount an offensive, mainly in the south, partly by attacking civilian and energy infrastructure. Meanwhile, he said, neighbouring Belarus would make a mistake of historic proportions if it joined in the Russian offensive, and claimed surveys showed 80% of the country did not wish to join the war.Trying to sound an optimistic note and taking up the theme of the conference, “David on the Dnipro”, Zelenskiy said his country had the courage to defeat Goliath with a slingshot. But for this to succeed, he said, the slingshot had to become stronger and faster. “Goliath has already started to lose. Goliath will definitely fall this year,” he said. Zelenskiy urges west to speed up arms support to head off Russia offensiveRead moreDonald Trump tried to call into Fox News as the January 6 insurrection was occurring, but network executives turned him down, fearing he could make the situation worse, CNN reports.The new details come from the documents containing communications between top Fox News personalities and officials that were made public yesterday as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against the network:Buried in the Dominion filing: Donald Trump dialed into Lou Dobbs’ show on 1/6 trying to get on air but Fox would not let him. 1/6 committee didn’t know Trump had made this call, according to a source familiar with the panel’s work. pic.twitter.com/vGWl4Lbn5Y— Annie Grayer (@AnnieGrayerCNN) February 17, 2023
      The justice department searched the offices of a conservative group connected to former vice-president Mike Pence as part of its investigation into his possession of classified documents, but found no additional items, Politico reports:JUST IN: Pence spokesman says”[DOJ] today completed a thorough and unrestricted search of Advancing American Freedom’s office for several hours and found no new documents with classified markings. One binder with approximately three previously redacted documents was taken.”— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) February 17, 2023
      A person familiar with the search says the binder is believed to be related to Pence’s 2020 debate prep. Pence had attorneys present throughout the search.— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) February 17, 2023
      The presence of classified documents at Pence’s Indiana home was first revealed last month, and the Republican former vice-president said he would cooperate with government efforts to retrieve any material in his possession. Unlike with the cases involving Joe Biden and Donald Trump – both of whom were discovered to be in possession of secret government material, though in vastly different circumstances – the justice department has not appointed a special counsel to handle the investigation into Pence.Joe Biden’s former executive assistant will sit for an interview with House Republicans investigating the president’s possession of classified documents, CNN reports.Kathy Chung was a staffer who in 2017 helped pack up Biden’s belongings at the end of his eight years as vice-president. Classified material dating to that stint in the White House, and to his time as senator, were among those found in his possession, sparking investigations by the justice department as well as the GOP-led House oversight committee, which will interview Chung.Here’s more from CNN’s report:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Chung was one of the staffers who packed Biden’s belongings and documents at the end of his time as vice president, according to people familiar with the matter.
      Those boxes eventually ended up at the Penn Biden Center and are now at the center of a special counsel investigation into the possible mishandling of classified info. A source close to Chung says she feels partly responsible for the situation.
      Chung’s lawyer, Bill Taylor, told CNN … they have been in discussions with the Oversight Committee over the past week and have agreed to provide the committee with much of what it requested in a letter last month.
      “She is happy to sit for an interview with the committee,” Taylor told CNN.
      The committee made a broad request that asks for materials well beyond the Biden document investigation including all communications with the Biden family dating back to 2009. The panel also demanded all documents and communications “related to then-Vice President Biden’s departure from office in 2017, including communications regarding Penn Biden Center,” the letter notes.
      Chung’s lawyer says there are limits on what they are willing to provide: “She is not agreeing to produce everything in the letter but would provide documents related to the movement of documents from the White House to the Penn Biden Center.”
      Taylor has proposed several dates for a possible interview, but the final date has not been set.More from Kamala Harris’s NBC interview, on her response to moves by Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, targeting the teaching of African American history.DeSantis, 44, is widely expected to run for the Republican presidential nomination and is the only close challenger to Donald Trump in polling.Harris is the first woman, the first Black American and the first South Asian American to be vice-president.She said: “Any push to censor America’s teachers and tell them what they should be teaching in the best interest of our children … is, I think, wrongheaded.“The people who know our children, are their parents and their teachers … and it should not be some politician saying what should be taught in our classrooms.”Dismissing Washington “chatter” about whether Joe Biden should run for re-election in 2024 and whether her own party thinks she would be a suitable replacement if he does not, Kamala Harris said the president “has said he intends to run for re-election … and I intend to run with him as vice-president of the United States”.Harris was speaking to NBC News at the Munich security conference.Biden has not formally declared a run but all signs suggest that he will. On Thursday, the White House physician pronounced him “fit for duty, and [to] fully execute all of his responsibilities without any exemptions or accommodations”.Also on Thursday, however, Politico reported concern among Democrats that at 80, and already the oldest president ever, Biden is too old to run for a second term, by the end of which he would be 86.The site also reported that insiders believe Harris would not be a good presidential candidate herself.Speaking to NBC, Harris said: “I think that it is very important to focus on the needs of the American people and not political chatter out of Washington DC.”She was also asked about Nikki Haley, the 51-year-old former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador now running for the Republican presidential nomination, who has called for a “new generation” of leaders and said politicians over the age of 75 should be subject to mandatory mental health tests.Haley’s only declared opponent for the Republican nomination, former president Donald Trump, is younger than Biden but only by four years. Haley has not said that Trump is too old.Harris, 58, said Haley was using “very coded language”, adding: “What I know from traveling our country is that the American people want leaders who will see what’s going on in their lives and create solution.“In Joe Biden, we have a president who is probably one of the boldest and strongest American presidents we have had in his response to the needs of the American people.”The Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley told a New Hampshire audience a controversial “don’t say gay” education law signed by the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, does not go “far enough”.“Basically what it said was you shouldn’t be able to talk about gender before third grade,” Haley said. “I’m sorry. I don’t think that goes far enough.”DeSantis’s law bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity through third grade, in which children are eight or nine years old. The law has proved hugely controversial, stoking confrontation with progressives but also corporations key to the Florida economy, Disney prominent among them.Some pediatric psychologists say the law could harm the mental health of LGBTQ+ youth already more likely to face bullying and attempt suicide than other children.Haley, a former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, this week became the second declared major candidate for the Republican nomination in 2024, after Donald Trump.Widely expected to run, DeSantis is the only candidate who challenges Trump in polling. Surveys have shown Haley in third place, with the potential to split the anti-Trump vote and hand the nomination to the former president.New Hampshire will stage the first primary of the Republican race. In Exeter on Thursday, Haley said: “There was all this talk about the Florida bill – the ‘don’t say gay bill’. Basically what it said was you shouldn’t be able to talk about gender before third grade. I’m sorry. I don’t think that goes far enough.“When I was in school you didn’t have sex ed until seventh grade. And even then, your parents had to sign whether you could take the class. That’s a decision for parents to make.”As reported by Fox News, Haley also said Republicans should “focus on new generational leadership” by putting “a badass woman in the White House”.Full story…Nikki Haley says Florida’s ‘don’t say gay’ law does not go ‘far enough’Read moreIn California, the Guardian’s Kira Lerner reports lawmakers are considering a proposal that would allow citizens to vote while incarcerated for felonies in state and federal prisons. Advocates for the measure see it as crucial for racial justice, since the state’s prison population is disproportionately non-white:Before having his sentence commuted by Governor Gavin Newsom last year, Thanh Tran served 10 and a half years in prisons and jails across California, a time he described as the “most traumatizing and dehumanizing experience of my life”.Had he been able to vote during that time, he said he would have maintained some hope that his community still cared about him.“The focus of incarceration right now in California is about punishment, but if I had the ability to vote, it would still create that tie to the community,” said Tran, now a policy associate with the Oakland-based Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. It would be like the community saying, “Thanh, we still care about you out here,” he said. “We know your sentence will one day end and we want you to return home and be a good neighbor to us.”Could California be the latest state to restore voting rights to felons?Read moreWe still don’t have all the answers about the recent spate of UFO shootdowns, but the US military announced it had recovered all of the Chinese spy balloon destroyed off South Carolina’s coast. As for the three other mysterious objects American warplanes downed over the US and Canada, there’s a compelling theory that one was a hobbyist’s balloon launched from Illinois. Speaking of the midwestern state, Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis will head there next week to address a police union – just the type of thing a state politician with national aspirations would do.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Georgia’s Republican secretary of state is claiming vindication after a special grand jury unanimously found there was no evidence of fraud in the 2020 election.
      Fox News’s biggest names never believed Donald Trump’s election fraud claims but parroted them anyway, newly released court filings show. This story has raised plenty of eyebrows – except for readers of the Wall Street Journal, a publication that shares ownership with the network and has yet to cover it.
      On the new Index of Impunity, the United States’s ranking is not particularly enviable.
      But what of the unidentified objects the US military shot down in the days after it destroyed the Chinese spy balloon? There’s still no official explanation of what those were, but the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe reports on the convincing evidence that one may have been a hobbyist’s balloon launched from Illinois:A group of amateur balloon enthusiasts in Illinois might have solved the mystery of one of the unknown flying objects shot down by the US military last week, a saga that had captivated the nation.The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade says one of its hobby craft went “missing in action” over Alaska on 11 February, the same day a US F-22 jet downed an unidentified airborne entity not far away above Canada’s Yukon territory.In a blogpost, the group did not link the two events. But the trajectory of the pico balloon before its last recorded electronic check-in at 12.48am that day suggests a connection – as well as a fiery demise at the hands of a sidewinder missile on the 124th day of its journey, three days before it was set to complete its seventh circumnavigation.If that is what happened, it would mean the US military expended a missile costing $439,000 to fell an innocuous hobby balloon worth about $12.Object downed by US missile may have been amateur hobbyists’ $12 balloonRead moreThe Chinese spy balloon has generated plenty of partisan furor in Washington, but there’s more evidence that Beijing has deployed similar craft for surveillance in the past.The Wall Street Journal reports that during Donald Trump’s administration, a small group of Pentagon officials tracked strange objects that are now thought to have been balloons over US airspace – but their observations never made their way to the White House.Here’s more from the report:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Now it appears some intelligence officials at the Pentagon were aware of the incidents and harbored concerns that they were related to China, believing Beijing was using them to test radar-jamming systems over sensitive U.S. military sites. The data collected about the Trump-era incidents was limited to a basic assessment and therefore wasn’t shared more broadly within the government at the time.
      Pentagon intelligence analysts reached their assessment about the objects in the summer of 2020, the former officials said.
      The assessment “never got to be assertive” in concluding that the objects were linked to Chinese surveillance, said one of the officials familiar with the issue.The Journal’s article notes that Mark Esper, the defense secretary from 2019 to 2020, never heard about these objects, which were smaller and made shorter flights over navy installations in Guam, California and Virginia.Republicans seized on the Chinese’s balloon’s flyover this month to argue the Biden administration wasn’t taking the threat from Beijing seriously, but the White House countered that three objects went undetected over US airspace while Trump was in office, and one earlier in Biden’s presidency. More

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      Nikki Haley says Florida’s ‘don’t say gay’ law does not go ‘far enough’

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      Nikki Haley says Florida’s ‘don’t say gay’ law does not go ‘far enough’Republican presidential candidate makes comments in New Hampshire on controversial law signed by governor Ron DeSantis02:41Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley told a New Hampshire audience the controversial “don’t say gay” education law signed by the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, does not go “far enough”.DeSantis wins new power over Disney World in ‘don’t say gay’ culture warRead more“Basically what it said was you shouldn’t be able to talk about gender before third grade,” Haley said. “I’m sorry. I don’t think that goes far enough.”DeSantis’s law bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity through third grade, in which children are eight or nine years old. The law has proved hugely controversial, stoking confrontation with progressives but also corporations key to the Florida economy, Disney prominent among them.Some pediatric psychologists say the law could harm the mental health of LGBTQ+ youth already more likely to face bullying and attempt suicide than other children.Haley, a former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, this week became the second declared major candidate for the Republican nomination in 2024, after Donald Trump.Widely expected to run, DeSantis is the only candidate who challenges Trump in polling. Surveys have shown Haley in third place, with the potential to split the anti-Trump vote and hand the nomination to the former president.New Hampshire will stage the first primary of the Republican race. In Exeter on Thursday, Haley said: “There was all this talk about the Florida bill – the ‘don’t Say gay bill’. Basically what it said was you shouldn’t be able to talk about gender before third grade. I’m sorry. I don’t think that goes far enough.“When I was in school you didn’t have sex ed until seventh grade. And even then, your parents had to sign whether you could take the class. That’s a decision for parents to make.”As reported by Fox News, Haley also said Republicans should “focus on new generational leadership” by putting “a badass woman in the White House”.Speaking to Fox News, Haley was asked about DeSantis and the “don’t say gay” law and she doubled down on her comments.She said: “I think Ron’s been a good governor. I just think that third grade’s too young. We should not be talking to kids in elementary school about gender, period.Nikki Haley: video shows Republican candidate saying US states can secedeRead more“And if you are going to talk to kids about it, you need to get the parents’ permission to do that. That is something between a parent and a child. That is not something that schools need to be teaching. Schools need to be teaching reading and math and science. They don’t need to be teaching whether they think you’re a boy or a girl.”Haley also claimed to be focused not on Republican rivals but on “running against Joe Biden”, adding: “I’m not kicking sideways. I’m kicking forward.”Haley, 51, has also attracted attention by controversially proposing mental competency tests for politicians over the age of 75.She said: “This is not hard. Just like we go and we turn over our tax returns … why can’t you turn over a mental competency test right when you run for office? Why can’t we have that?”Biden is 80. Trump is 76.TopicsNikki HaleyUS politicsRepublicansRon DeSantisFloridaNew HampshireLGBTQ+ rightsnewsReuse this content More

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      Sarah Palin says Ron DeSantis ‘should stay governor’ and not run for president

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      Sarah Palin says Ron DeSantis ‘should stay governor’ and not run for presidentPalin, who quit as Alaska governor in 2009 amid talk of a run for president, envisions DeSantis running one day ‘but not now’ Ron DeSantis of Florida should stay as governor “a bit longer” and not run for president in 2024, said Sarah Palin – the former Alaska governor who was John McCain’s running mate in 2008 but resigned rather than complete her term after Republican defeat.Nikki Haley calls for ‘new generation’ of leaders in presidential campaign launchRead moreDeSantis, 44, has not declared a run but is widely expected to do so as the only strong challenger to Donald Trump in polling regarding the forming field.Palin, a Trump supporter, told Newsmax: “DeSantis doesn’t need to [run]. I envision him as our president someday but not right now.“He should stay governor for a bit longer. He’s young, you know. He has decades ahead of him where he can be our president.”The field of declared candidates is now two-strong, with the entry of Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador. One recent poll showed Haley splitting the anti-Trump vote with DeSantis and thereby handing the nomination to the legally embattled, electorally unpopular former president.In office, DeSantis has aped Trump with hardline and often theatrically cruel policies, focusing on culture war issues including education and the Covid pandemic. But he stormed to re-election last year and is the party establishment favourite. He is widely reported to be readying a run.Palin, 59, said she was “all about healthy, competitive primaries. That makes everybody debate more articulately and work harder and let the people know what records are and visions for this country are.“… But when you talk about the specific people, the individual people who are looking at putting their hat in the ring … they got a lot of guts thinking they’re gonna go up against Trump.”Asked if she would be willing to be Trump’s pick for vice-president, Palin said: “What President Trump and I have talked about is kind of the same thing that we’re talking about.”Palin was plucked from relative obscurity to be McCain’s running mate against Barack Obama in 2008, a risky choice McCain reportedly made by miming rolling a dice and saying: “Fuck it. Let’s do it.”Palin proved a hit with the Republican base – many see her selection as the birth moment of the populist far right which now dominates the party – but not with the electorate at large.She quit as Alaska governor in July 2009, prompting widespread criticism for walking away from the job before her term was up. Many suspected she would run for president. That prospect never materialised but Palin has remained prominent on the US far right.Last year, an attempt to win a seat in Congress fell short despite Trump’s support, with Alaska sending the Democrat Mary Peltola to Washington instead.Palin also fell short in court, when she sued the New York Times for libel.TopicsSarah PalinRon DeSantisDonald TrumpUS elections 2024US politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      DeSantis wins new power over Disney World in ‘don’t say gay’ culture war

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      DeSantis wins new power over Disney World in ‘don’t say gay’ culture warFlorida legislature gives governor right to name members of board supervising theme park, claiming: ‘There’s a new sheriff in town’ Florida’s far-right governor, Ron DeSantis, has won the right to appoint the members of the board that supervises the development of the state’s famous Walt Disney World theme parks after a fight over a law that restricts sexual orientation and gender identity discussions in schools.Disney as a result is set to lose some of the autonomy it has enjoyed in Florida during the last nearly six decades, but the company has held on to some of its key privileges amid the culture war leveled at it by DeSantis.DeSantis ramps up ‘war on woke’ with new attacks on Florida higher educationRead moreNonetheless, with his usual bluster, DeSantis declared victory over the conglomerate whose mascot is Mickey Mouse, saying: “There’s a new sheriff in town.”DeSantis directed his ire at Disney after the media titan decided to suspend political donations in Florida after the state’s legislature last year passed a “don’t say gay” law that limited mention of LGBTQ+ issues in schools.Florida’s Orlando area is home to the 25,000-acre Disney World theme park complex, which first opened in 1971 and reportedly attracted nearly 13 million visitors last year. And to retaliate, DeSantis sought to strip Disney of a special tax district designation that let the company govern them autonomously, including by issuing tax-exempt bonds and advancing building plans without oversight from certain local authorities.The governor’s move against Disney had the full support of the state legislature, which is controlled by his fellow Republicans and voted to strip the company of its tax district status beginning on 1 June 2023. But then the steep cost of following through on DeSantis’s wishes for Disney became apparent.Letting the district dissolve would require taxpayers in Orange and Osceola counties – which are adjacent to the theme parks – to begin paying for the firefighting, police and road maintenance services that Disney had been paying. And the counties’ taxpayers would also have to cover the Disney tax district’s debt of $1bn or so.So this week, Florida’s legislators adjusted course. They drafted a measure that would empower the state’s governor to appoint the five members of the tax district’s controlling board. It also would leave Disney vulnerable to possibly being forced to pay taxes to fund road projects outside the theme park complex’s vicinity, and new construction costs might increase because the measure eliminated some of the company’s exemption from certain regulatory processes, the New York Times reported.Nonetheless, the new measure would permit Disney – one of Florida’s largest private employers – to retain its special tax district status. And the board would remain powerless as far as influencing what content the company chooses to present to guests at its theme parks as well as viewers of its movies and shows.Florida’s house of representatives approved the legislation on Thursday, and the state senate did the same on Friday.DeSantis said the legislation definitively buried previously aired concerns that Floridians would end up paying more in taxes because of his differences with Disney.“This puts that to bed,” DeSantis said, while also boasting that he was now the new sheriff in town.The president of Disney World, Jeff Vahle, issued a notably apolitical statement to the Times that described the complex as “focused on the future and … ready to work within this new framework”.Separately last week, DeSantis announced plans to block state colleges from having programs on diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as on critical race theory – the study of how racism has shaped American history. That plan comes on the heels of his blocking public high schools from teaching a new advanced placement course on African American studies.DeSantis, who has long advocated to keep firearms as accessible to the public as possible, caught some political fire on Friday after the Washington Post reported that he had asked for guns to be banned from a party celebrating his re-election to a second term last year.DeSantis’s campaign staff also asked the Tampa city officials in control of the convention center hosting the party to take responsibility for the gun ban so as not to upset his supporters, the Post’s report added, citing emails obtained by the newspaper.One county-level Republican leader told the Post that such a ban was “a little hypocritical” given how DeSantis has presented himself as a pro-gun rights advocate. A spokesperson for DeSantis told the Post that its reporting was “speculation and hearsay” and that the governor was “strongly in support of individuals’ constitutional right to bear arms”.Many expect DeSantis to pursue the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election. As of Saturday, the former president Donald Trump was the only Republican candidate to have declared an intention to challenge Democratic incumbent Joe Biden.TopicsRon DeSantisWalt Disney CompanyUS politicsFloridanewsReuse this content More

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      Nikki Haley presidential run would sink DeSantis and hand Trump victory – poll

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      Nikki Haley presidential run would sink DeSantis and hand Trump victory – pollYahoo News/YouGov survey finds that an additional Republican candidate would split the vote in former president’s favor As the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley prepares to announce a run for president, a new poll found that just one additional candidate in the 2024 Republican primary will be enough to split the vote and keep Donald Trump ahead of Ron DeSantis, his only current close rival.The race for the 2024 election is on. But who will take on Trump?Read moreThe Yahoo News/YouGov poll gave DeSantis, the Florida governor, a 45%-41% lead over Trump head-to-head. Similar scenarios in other polls have prompted increasing attacks on DeSantis by Trump – and deflections by DeSantis.Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, DeSantis said: “I don’t spend my time trying to smear other Republicans.”But the Wednesday poll also produced an alternative scenario involving Haley that may worry DeSantis.Haley was ambassador to the United Nations under Trump before resigning in 2018. Having changed her mind about challenging her former boss, she is due to announce her campaign in her home state next week.Yahoo News reported: “In a hypothetical three-way match-up, Haley effectively plays the spoiler, attracting 11% of Republicans and Republican-leaners while DeSantis’s support falls by roughly the same amount (to 35%), leaving Trump with more votes than either of them” at 38%.When Trump first ran for the Republican nomination, in 2016, he did so in a primary field which was 17 strong come the first debate. Trump won the nomination without winning a majority of votes cast.He ended his presidency twice-impeached and in wide-ranging legal jeopardy but he is still the only declared candidate for the nomination in 2024, having announced shortly after last year’s midterm elections.Defeats for Trump-endorsed candidates cost Republicans dearly in November, particularly as the US Senate remained in Democratic hands, prompting some Republicans to turn against the idea of a third Trump nomination.Haley is due to announce her run on 15 February in Charleston, South Carolina, before heading to New Hampshire, which also has an early slot on the primary calendar.According to the Yahoo/YouGov poll, Haley attracted much more support than other potential candidates including the former vice-president Mike Pence, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and Larry Hogan, a former governor of Maryland.According to NBC News, Chris Sununu, the governor of New Hampshire and like Hogan a Republican moderate, is also preparing to run.Nikki Haley accuses Pompeo of ‘lies and gossip to sell book’ after vice-president plot claimRead moreThe Yahoo/YouGov poll said the same vote-splitting scenario played out with fields larger than three: the anti-Trump vote split and Trump therefore beat DeSantis. Other polls have returned similar results.Art Cullen, editor of the Storm Lake Times in Iowa, the state that will vote first, recently told the Guardian: “These folks must be watching Trump’s poll numbers and that’s why there’s a delay [in announcements].”“Trump and DeSantis are doing this sparring around the ring. Others are watching to see if somebody takes a blow and gives them an opening.”But Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark, an anti-Trump conservative website, recently wrote: “Presumably the numerous candidates gearing up to run in the GOP primary understand that a fractured field benefits Donald Trump.”“Are we sure they understand that they’d need to coalesce around a frontrunner by February 2024 to avoid the same scenario that gave us Trump in 2016?”TopicsUS elections 2024US politicsRepublicansDonald TrumpRon DeSantisNikki HaleynewsReuse this content More

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      Conservatives angry about school ‘indoctrination’ are telling on themselves | Jan-Werner Müller

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      Conservatives angry about school ‘indoctrination’ are telling on themselvesJan-Werner MüllerIdeologues like Ron DeSantis aren’t angry at politics in education; they’re angry their politics don’t have a monopoly The rightwing governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, and his administration recently blocked a proposed black studies course for advanced placement high school students, as well as announced policies that would inhibit state universities from teaching programming about racial diversity, equity and inclusion or so-called “critical race theory”. These moves follow on the heels of Florida’s “don’t say gay” legislation, last year, restricting teachers from discussing sexual orientation.DeSantis and other conservative politicians argue that they are saving America’s young from leftwing indoctrination, and that students should instead be exposed to “civic education” that extolls a patriotic vision of America. When DeSantis and his growing number of acolytes present themselves as champions of civic education, however, they are in fact undermining the whole point of civics: not to make children “patriotic” or just fill brains with facts (how many branches of government are there again?), but to enable individuals to be fearless, critical citizens.That very enterprise is threatened by these systematic intimidation campaigns. In fact, DeSantis’s anti-education crusade is doubly authoritarian – most obviously in its use of state power to suppress ideas and information, but also in its more subtle assumption that teaching is ultimately about imposing doctrines of one sort or another.It is an open question whether the College Board did cave to pressure from conservatives when they removed supposedly controversial material from the new African American history AP course. It is also an open question to what extent civil rights lawyers and free speech advocates can stop DeSantis’s censorship laws in court. But one thing is clear: damage to US democracy is being done already. Despite valiant resistance, on the whole, teachers and professors are intimidated. As we know from the rise of authoritarianism in other countries and periods, all-out repression is not always necessary: people obey in advance, make small adjustments, or altogether vacate a territory where the red lines which must not be crossed are left purposefully vague.We also know from anti-education crusades disguised as culture wars in states such as Hungary that defenders of academic freedom are faced with a dilemma, one that is being reproduced in the US today. On the one hand, defenders can try to deny that anything they do is political at all. Education, they might insist, is about science and telling the kids what’s what only in terms of facts.Less obviously, they might seek to escape politics by emphasizing worthy enterprises like “service learning”. Yet community service, as valuable as it can be both for students and the community, cannot substitute for genuine political education, in which students learn to discuss and, above all, to disagree. As John Hopkins president Ron Daniels has pointed out, students are ever more willing to volunteer, which is great (of course, volunteering also always looks good on CVs, one might add), but less eager to engage democratic politics more directly – and colleges seem complicit in this trend.Teachers are rightly worried that, in an age of hyper-polarization, politics can make their classrooms explode; often enough, they also lack the time, resources and skills to deal with what can be a drawn-out and difficult process of young people learning how to negotiate their differences in a democratic manner. Add to that the sense that we are falling behind globally in Stem, and hence should not waste time on soft subjects that won’t help us compete with China.But there is no escape: those declaring the supposed “education establishment” their enemy won’t accept claims that schools aren’t doing politics. The likes of Viktor Orbán and his de facto pupil DeSantis will frame professors as purveyors of dangerous ideologies no matter what. For that is their political business model. Moral panics happen because political entrepreneurs want to spread panic; responses that come down to “don’t panic!” or “let’s talk about something else” won’t work.That is especially so with propaganda about pedagogy: schooling is so damn close to home, and yet not under the control of those at home; appeals to deep worries about what is happing to the kids when they are out of our hands can be very effective. (It is not an accident that conspiracy theories like QAnon use the quasi-natural resource of parental fears for generating panic and hate.)So, should one simply concede that it’s all politics, all the time, all the way down, and that everyone is simply spreading their ideology? Of course not. Education is political not because everyone gets to teach their politics to innocent charges, but because it is indispensable for democracy. As John Dewey, the greatest 20th-century philosopher of education put it, “democracy has to be born anew every generation and education is its midwife”. Countries with well-functioning democracies also do well on civic education scores. But that is not just a matter of knowledge about democracy, but doing democracy, which can be uncomfortable, even distressing and guilt-inducing (feelings which the Sunshine State Inquisitors try to banish by law from the classroom).Good teachers will assist students with how to think through issues; they don’t tell them what to think about issues. It is telling that some conservative crusaders – with an obvious tendency to project their own approach on to others – cannot conceive of teaching this way. To them, education is a weapon; content is not to be debated, but imposed. It is one thing to find fault with the specifics of the “western civ”-style curricula that DeSantis cadres want to do; it’s another to point out that the very approach is a continuation of Trump’s unprofessional 1776 Commission, which can only see history as a patriotic confidence-booster and, indeed, indoctrination.
      Jan-Werner Müller teaches at Princeton and is a Guardian US columnist. His most recent book is Democracy Rules
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